This year, there is much more discourse than in previous years about "walking the environmental walk."

The theme is Green the Man, and BM for years has been a model of Leave No Trace ethos. But this year's theme makes it even more important to make Burning Man itself a more environmentally friendly event, in addition to being a loud call to protect the environment.

That has spawned lots of discussions like, how do I build a huge, cheap, disposal camp or village with a huge generator running 24/7, or camp for a week in a pollution spewing-RV with a chemical toilet, without shitting on Mother Nature!?!?

I therefore propose to my own camp (Mystikal Mysfits) and to all participants at Burning Man 2007, to estimate your carbon footprint just for attending Burning Man, and purchase carbon offsets to reduce our contribution to global warming!

My rough estimate using Carbonfund.org:

For 1 RV going 1,300 miles round trip to Black Rock City, at about 12 miles per gallon, and using a 4 Kw generator for 3 hours per day, for 8 days (96 Kw/hrs.), the carbon calculator estimates a carbon footprint of 1 ton, or 1 ton of CO2 emitted into the environment.

I'm fine with the idea as long as people don't think they are off the hook as evil polluting consumer whores because they fund carbon reducing programs. Be honest with who you are and come to terms with it, then decide how you wish to invest your time and money.

MikeVDS wrote:I'm fine with the idea as long as people don't think they are off the hook as evil polluting consumer whores because they fund carbon reducing programs. Be honest with who you are and come to terms with it, then decide how you wish to invest your time and money.

I won't get off the hook by buying offsets?!? Oh no! --- Al Gore

"Nothing is withheld from us which we have conceived to do.Do things that have never been done."--Russell Kirsch

And personally I don't buy this carbon offset stuff. The Carbon Fund.org website looks like nothing more than a scam to allow a select group of individuals to "retire" with a nice sized income stream instead of retiring some bogus "carbon credits".

For example this website says it buys credits from the Chicago Climate Exchange. I visited their website and clicked on the About link. This first paragraph raises a red flag with me:

The Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) is North Americaâ€™s only, and the worldâ€™s first, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission registry, reduction and trading system for all six greenhouse gases (GHGs).

Hmmmm....let's create some cool logos, slap together a bogus website and sit back and watch the "green" roll in.

Sorry, I'm not buying it. Offer me something based on proven science and I'll buy into it. This stuff is not it. And the post makes me wonder if anyone really checks this stuff out and checks the links before buying into what they're trying to sell.

I know of someone who wanted to buy a share of TerraPass a carbon footprint recovery organization. He was looking to invest tens of thousands of dollars so that he could "feel good about giving back to the planet."

Funny - he couldn't get TerraPass to actually prove where the money was spent but the TerraPass people sure had really nice homes and drove expensive cars. I wonder if they contribute to themselves?

I don't know of any but I'm sure there are genuine organizations along these lines that purchase "damaged" land and increase the CO2 absorption. Yes, documentation and other evidence of their work should be required.

That picture???? Looked like a Bart Simpson shaped pool being dug. Maybe from $$$ raised from people buying offsets.

I'm going to offset my carbon footprint by:
Planting the veggie garden again (Our veggies don't use trucks to deliver them to our kitchen, they use two feet!)
Maybe plant a tree.
Start another flower garden.
Not mow my grass as much. (Which will provide more O2 and less exhaust from da mower)
Work as little as possible. So I don't drive as much.
Use E-85 when possible in the Suburban. (Only 2 stations here in Chicago, both 15 miles away from my house)
Keep my music digital off the net. No more plastic CDs
Paper, not plastic bags.
Smoke non filtered rolling tobacco.
Piss in the sink to save water compared to the toilet.
Bitch about Mayor Daley who plants new tulips. EVERY SPRING. After throwing out the previous year's.
Let people carpool with me to BRC.
Stay thin as extra weight means higher gas mileage. Oh, and more CO2 exhaled.
Take public transportation more often.
Recycle my old pickup into art rather then junking it.
Get my oil changed at a lube center rather then what my neighbors do, dump it in the ally.
Not fart as much. (Appearently cows do a lot of damage to greenhouse stuff.)

I will do much more then this probably. But if there's anyone out there that can't do as much as me then feel free to send me a check and I'll make sure you get credit publicly for reducing your own carbon footprint by paying me to reduce mine more instead. Minimum is $10. Or one penny for every mile you drive to BM. If you donate $1000 or more to the Rat Bastard Fund for the Lazy Poluting Bitches I will recycle my urine in your name. You will then recieve said urine via airmail in a crafty little gift box that you can show off to your rich friends and be the envy of them all while you toast urine cocktails with dignitaries. At $10,000 you can recieve a batch of homemade brownies baked in a solar oven made with 100% oganic human feces.

As I see it, you are going to use between 120 and 130 gallons of fuel. Rather than paying somebody so you don't feel guilty, why don't you do something productive. Find a way to save the equivalent of that fuel and actually do it. Add some solar to your house, ride a bike rather than using the car, cut your electricity usage, but do something real. Paying somebody else to do your dirty work just does not cut it. Take responsibility for your own actions, and quit hiding behind the almighty dollar.

Walk around your home and you probably see them everywhere. In my house, I found them attached to my printer, scanner, speakers, answering machine, cordless phone, electric screwdriver, electric drill, baby monitor, clock radio, camcorder… You get the idea. A typical home probably has five to 10 of these little transformers plugged into the wall at any given time.

It turns out that these transformers consume power whenever they are plugged into the wall, whether they are connected to a device or not. They also waste power when powering a device.
If you have ever felt one and it was warm, that is wasted energy turned to heat. The power consumption is not large -- on the order of 1 to 5 watts per transformer. But it does add up. Let's say that you have 10 of them, and they consume 5 watts each. That means that 50 watts are being wasted constantly. If a kilowatt-hour costs a dime in your area, that means you are spending a dime every 20 hours. That's about $44 every year down the drain. Or, think of it this way -- there are roughly 100 million households in the United States. If each household wastes 50 watts on these transformers, that's a total of 5 billion watts. As a nation, that's half a million dollars wasted every hour, or $4,380,000,000 wasted every year! Think of what you could do with 4 billion dollars…

Where these small loads really take a toll is in remote locations powered by things like solar cells and wind generators. In these systems, you are paying something on the order of $10 to $20 per watt (once you add up the cost of the solar cells, the batteries to store the power, the power regulators and inverter, etc.). Fifty watts at $20 per watt means that you have to spend an additional $1,000 just to power the transformers. In these kinds of systems, small loads are something you avoid by unplugging the transformers when not in use or by eliminating the transformer and powering the device straight from the battery bank to improve efficiency.

However, the added electricity expense is offset by the manufacturing cost savings passed along to the customer, hopefully, as a lower product selling price.

For example, it costs a manufacturer considerably less to manufacture and stock one universal "flavor" of printer that runs on 12 volts DC. The manufacturer then packages the printer with a country-dependent voltage AC wall transformer for the country it's being sold in. When a new version of the device comes out, the manufacturer doesn't need to retool the power supply.

stargeezer wrote:As I see it, you are going to use between 120 and 130 gallons of fuel. Rather than paying somebody so you don't feel guilty, why don't you do something productive. Find a way to save the equivalent of that fuel and actually do it. Add some solar to your house, ride a bike rather than using the car, cut your electricity usage, but do something real. Paying somebody else to do your dirty work just does not cut it. Take responsibility for your own actions, and quit hiding behind the almighty dollar.

Just my $.02!!

Again, I (we) am/should be doing those things in addition. To me the attraction of buying carbon offsets is to help for the things that I don't want to give up.

So...I'm supposed to buy "carbon offsets" from some fly by night outfit that can't be verified as legit? Again, for all we know that money is paying someone's Lexus payment and not doing a damn thing for the environment.

Some topics deserve negative attention and/or skepticism. Being negative is not always a bad thing. Most things in this world have pros and cons. If you only look at the pros of the things you do you may end up doing far less good than you could.

stargeezer wrote:From your remarks, I must assume the following definations:

Positive: Paying others to relieve one's guilt.

Negative: Doing actual productive work to improve the environment.

Yes, I guess I will side with others that are negative.

Negative: misspelling DEFINITION.

Also, as you will read in my thread, doing this isn't INSTEAD of doing other things, but IN ADDITION to doing other things. So YES, you ARE a negative nancy if all you can see is the negative side of this.

If carbon offsets didn't exist, people should still be more environmentally responsible. This just provides an additional tool (and finally, at least a convenient one).

I suppose you also flame people who say, hey, I want to do something good for the environment, so I'm going to buy wind energy, instead of coal fired energy. You would probably say, no, just don't use any energy! Walk to work, work in the dark, and walk home. Eat raw spinach in the dark, go to sleep.

The earth will be completely burned up if you would just scream about how people are only making moderate improvements in protecting the environment. Finding ways to make it convenient, or economical, or even lucrative for people to be green, is the only way you will ever reach the mainstream. Just look at the Prius fool! You probably said that was just a gimmick - you should walk to work. But how far has the lowly Prius taken us in raising the awareness among Joe Sixpacks that the environment even exists.

Also, as you will read in my thread, doing this isn't INSTEAD of doing other things, but IN ADDITION to doing other things.

I do not think you're really reading other peoples posts. Everyone has finite resources. There is question whether this is a good way to use them. If you spend $10 on planting your own tree or spending it on some other organization. If you say spend $10 in addition to that, now you're spending $20 and you should consider the best way to spend that $20. Saying doing something in addition only works when your resources are not finite.

Maybe you shouldn't spend the effort trying to argue with people who have valid points and concerns unless you have some real data. How about a comparison of how much carbon the company you're supporting can absorbed from our atmosphere compared to the amount of carbon we can eliminate by investing that $10 ourselves. Perhaps because of their large scale they can have a bigger impact somehow? We don't know. If you want to defend your point, don't argue, educate us with something we do not see.

I suppose you also flame people who say, hey, I want to do something good for the environment, so I'm going to buy wind energy, instead of coal fired energy. You would probably say, no, just don't use any energy! Walk to work, work in the dark, and walk home. Eat raw spinach in the dark, go to sleep.

I live in the mountains where I was told solar energy collection is not practical. Ignoring the advice of others, I installed 240 square feet of active heat collection area, and using a pump that draws about 60 watts, I can collect the energy equivalent of 2.5 gallons of propane per day. During the warmer portion of the year, this provides heating and all of my domestic hot water, and I never run out. During the winter, this provides a significant portion of my household heat.

Carbon credits are pure BULLSHIT. If you want to help the environment, save toward a major project and do something real. If you want to bury your head in the sand and relieve your guilt by paying others, that is your choice.

Just out of curiousity, do you have any interest in a carbon credit company? With your attitude, it sure would appear that you don't want anyone screwing up your retirement fund, but would rather others just blindly contribute.

Negative: misspelling DEFINITION.

It would appear that you are really grasping for straws. If my occasional typing error is your only source of ammunition, I must not be that negative.

Now that is a good idea. This is one area where I have not had the best of luck, but I continue to try. I always thought soil conditions and weather were the biggest obstacle to successful planting, I have learned that local rodents are an even bigger issue. It seems they believe those new roots in the area are their winter food supply. Now when I plant a tree, I figure I am just feeding the rodents, and if I get lucky the tree will survive. My success rate is only about 10%, which means that I have to plant lots of trees.

If I was too abrasive, this is one area where I am extremely sensitive. I am willing to donate my time to neighbors to make their homes more energy efficient, and all they look at is the initial cost of the modifications. My view on carbon credits is that they are very similar to many charities in their money trail. If you follow the money, some goes to administration, some to overhead, some to redistribution, .... and the amount that gets to the real problem is a fraction of the amount spent. Rather than spending your money on carbon credits, I would suggest you organize a small group and help winterize a home that is in desperate need. This will insure that the money spent goes to filling the need, and energy conservation is currently one of the best methods of fighting carbon loading.

Once people start looking for reasonable options to help the cause, they are really limitless. My point is very simple, don't pay someone else when you can insure the job actually gets done. There may be good carbon credit companies out there, but seperating them from the scams wastes time, and unfortunately, time is not on our side.

Trees only sequester carbon when they grow. Once a forest is mature not much more sequestering of carbon takes place, and when the tree burns, or falls and rots it is released again.

My thinking is in reduction of intake is as good or better than offsets. Buy in bulk, reuse packaging, turn off lights, drive the most economical car you can get by with, use lower wattage and more efficient bulbs, if you build a house install gas appliances, lots of insulation, good windows, etc. and Recycle.

Ultimately I would like to see us (whomanity) get away from petroleum. it is ridiculous to ramp up oil production when we at best have a hundred years of oil left. Coal only leaves us about 250-300 years left at the increasing rate that we are consuming both of these resources.

I would like to see hundreds and hundreds of nuclear plants built with the newest designs that produce a fraction of the waste of todays designs.

And Hydrogen for personnal automobiles.

I firmly believe that the babyboomers are the first generation to leave the planet in worse shape than when they got it. Thats a trend that is going to doom the planet and in quick time if it isnt broken.

Bear in mind this is me rambling after 36 hours of work. But i think i made some salient points.
later